Alfan Zuhairi (Lecturer of FKIP UNISMA)
Chomsky is a well-known American linguist whose revolutionary ideas in linguistics make him the famous American Linguist who changed a deep face of linguistics into different concepts. Besides that he is also known as political activists who have often opposed to the current government policy. Lastly, through his scientific life, he is also considered as a philosopher. This article covers only on his spectacular ideas in linguistics which make him as the innovator in viewing the study of language. Through his outstanding concept of Transformational Generative Grammar, he exposed his attacking ideas in linguistics to the world. There are at least three reasons that make him different from previous-influential linguists in the world. They are 1) the concept of UG (Universal Grammar) which includes psychological aspects in analyzing a language, 2) by applying the principles of the Transformational Generative Grammar, a grammar has the criterion of explanatory adequacy which can distinguish a deep structure from a surface structure, and 3) and the concept of Competence and Performance. Furthermore, this paper also discusses the strength and the weaknesses of Chomsky’s theory and finally describes the contribution of his theory to SLA.
A. Chomsky’s Revolutionary Concepts in Linguistic Study
It was Chomsky who introduced a new horizon in linguistics after he published his monumental Syntactic Structure in 1957. Chomsky launched his idea of syntax to analyze the phenomena of human language which is against the behaviorist view of language. Syntax is the study of principles and process by which sentences are constructed in a particular language and the ultimate outcome of the syntactic investigation must produce a theory of linguistic structure. By using the particular grammar to analyze the language abstractly, with no specific reference to particular grammar, linguists have an ability to describe the principle and the process of a human language. In this point, he wants to say that by analyzing a particular language through what actually happened in human mind which has been equipped with faculty of an intake language learning devices or LAD. Kadarisman (2006) says that the definition of syntax suggests a cognitive or mental activity since a grammar mirrors the behavior of the speakers who can produce and understand an indifinite number of sentences.
- 1. Deep and Surface Structures
Chomsky launched a new and influential theory in linguistics called Transformational Generative Grammar (TG). He distinguishes the insight of Surface and Deep Structure in language analysis. Language can be defined as an infinite set of well form sentences and there is no limit to the number of sentences in all natural languages in their spoken or written form. Any normal native speakers of language can produce unlimited number of sentences without any stop; however, who wants to do that? Furthermore, grammar is a formal device with finite set of rules that generates the sentences in the language. Grammar thus is a theory of language, composed of more hypotheses about the structure or organization of some part of the language adequately (Chomsky; 1957 & Carroll: 1999). With the power of grammar in analyzing a language both in phonemic level which is usually uttered by native speakers and sentence level, he says that linguistic must be able also to explain phenomena of utterances spoken by native speaker. For instance, phoneme / / can be understood ambiguously as either “a name” or “an aim”. By applying two levels of explanation phonological and morphological representation, those phenomena can adequately described by setting up morpheme “a”, “an”, “aim” and “name”. Thus, by representing the morphological level, the phonological ambiguous phrase can explained adequately.
In addition, Chomsky hypothesizes the concept of deep and surface structure by which a sentence can be interpreted into two more detailed sentences. Yule (1985) commented on the concept of grammar from Chomsky in that grammar should be capable of revealing the basis of phenomena; first, how some superficially distinct sentences are closely related, and second, how some superficially similar sentences are in fact different. For instance, Charlie broke the window (Active Sentence) and The window was broken by Charlie ( Passive sentence). The two sentences are claimed to be different in level of surface structure, that is in English syntactical structure while in fact the two sentences are identical in level of the deep structure. The deep structure is an abstract level of structural organization in which all elements are represented. Kadarisman (2006) states that the introduction of the transformational components to syntactic description is meant to solve weaknesses of the intermediate constituent (IC) analysis; for the IC model of analysis to cannot see clearly the inherent relation between active and passive sentence.
The concepts of deep and surface structure is actually pointed out the roughly concept of descriptive linguists who proposed a language in terms of classifying it into parts of speech and learning a language is a matter of repetition and memorizing. Such as the examples given below in which descriptive linguists only categorize those sentences into subject, noun, verb, article, preposition etc.
Flying planes can be dangerous
Flying planes : subject
can : modal auxiliary
be : to be (verb copula)
dangerous : complement
and
Different from IC analysis which break down them into part of speech and the result are just naming the sentence, the sentence show two different meaning if it is interpreted deeply by transforming it. Flying planes can be dangerous is ambiguous since it can be broken down into the act of flying planes can be dangerous or Planes which are flying can be dangerous. Thus, the sentence can be analyzed vividly by solely classifying into parts of speech. Huda (1999) says that a spoken or written utterance has a surface structure serves as a manifestation of the deep structure while Carroll (1999) says that the surface structure is the starting point for comprehension and that the deep structure is the end point.
Another example:
“He hits the boy with a book”
The above sentence also looks ambiguous and can be interpreted more deeply into two different sentences. They are 1) he hits the boy by using a book and 2) he hits the boy who is bringing a book.
Still, a kind of fact that descriptive linguists are failed to analyze or interpret sentences is given below:
- 1. John is easy to please
- 2. John is eager to please
Superficially, in level of surface structure, both sentences seem equal. However, they show clearly different sentences, in level of deep structure, if they are transformed each of them in the same way.
1 a. It is easy to please John
2 a. It is eager to please John (the sentence is ungrammatical sentence)
Again, there is such kind of an active-passive contrast. By applying deep analysis each of the sentence are different.
1 b. It is easy. Somebody pleases John or John is pleased
2 b. John is eager. John pleases somebody
In sum, it can be said that since Chomsky launched or published his book on Syntactic Structure in 1950s, he have made extremely revolutionary thought in studying a language. The study of language is not just classifying sentences into each part of speech. Rather, the study of language should attempt to produce explicit rules in specifying what combination of basic elements until resulting a well-formed sentences (Yule, 1985).
- 2. The concept Linguistic Competence vs. Performance
In line with differentiation of deep and surface structure, Chomsky (1965) also classified language into two parts: competence and performance. Competence is the ideal ability of speaker of a certain language. Competence is described as a complete and perfect knowledge of a language as mirrored in communication between the speaker and the hearer in ideal situation while performance is a direct reflection of the speakers’ competence or the realization of competence in the form of utterances in real situation.
Chomsky (1965) says that
“linguistic theory is concerned primarily with an ideal speaker-listener, i a complete homogeneous speech community, who knows its language perfectly and is unaffected by such grammatically irrelevant condition as memory limitation, distractions, shift of attention and interest, and errors (random and characteristic) in applying his knowledge of the language in actual performance.’
According to Boe (1975), a person’ actual utterances in a particular situation may be ungrammatical or incomplete because he is tired, stressed or even excited or not paying full attention to speaker who speak to him. However, the linguist’s duty is to describe the language competence of the speaker by observing his performance. Moreover, Chomsky (1965) emphasizes that the linguist has to “determine from the data of performance the underlying system of rules that has been mastered by speaker-hearer and that he puts to use in actual sentences.
- 3. The Concept of Universal Grammar (UG)
It is undeniable that Chomsky is a brilliant linguist whose ideas in linguistics have refuted his frontiers’ concept in linguistics by involving psychology in analyzing linguistics. He strongly disagreed with Bloomfield’s notion of language which is based on Skinner’s behaviorism in Psychology. According to Bloomfield’s theory of language, the process of acquiring language is the process of stimulus, response and reinforcement procedures. Behaviorism believes that the process of acquiring first language is a matter of habit or repetitions. According to this notion, children acquire their language because they receive the language repeatedly from their environment. Moreover, it is also believed that language is learned through imitating, memorizing and being rewarded for saying the correct things. The idea of Bloomfield in linguistics strongly affects the concept of English teaching methodology-the so called Audio-Lingual Method (ALM). These make Chomsky strongly upset (Duley, Burt, and Kreshen: 1982). In disposing Bloomfieldian affecting ideas in linguistic, he argued that the central force of acquiring language is a language specific “mental structure” or “Language Acquisition Devices’ (LAD). Since all human beings are born with this device, all children in the world can acquire and master their first language in the early childhood and in an extremely fast period and produce their utterances to communicate with environment and even expressions that they have never heard before (Carroll:1999). It is impossible for the children within a very short time- two, three or four years- can store a bulk of language utterances in their brain only from their environment, parents, sisters or brothers. In other words, the processes of acquiring language never occur under the process of repetition or memorizing knowledge (Boe, 1975; Duley et al, 1982). In sum, human mental structure or LAD can cause human language psycholinguistically creative in nature. Chomsky’s theory, which involves the aspects of psychology, might trigger scientists in second language acquisition to be more concerned in observing and developing the SLA theory.
In 1965 Chomsky published another monumental book on Aspects of the Theory of Syntax which signifies the maturity of the new school in linguistics (Kadarisman, 206). He claims that linguistic theory is concerned primarily with linguistic competence. Furthermore, He poses his idea of syntax to analyze the phenomena of human language which against the behaviorist view to a language. Syntax is the study of the principle ad process by which sentences are constructed in particular language and the ultimate outcome of the syntactic investigation must produce a theory of linguistic structure. By using the particular grammar to analyze the language abstractly, with no specific reference to particular language, linguists have an ability to describe the principle and the process of human language. His opinion implies that by analyzing deeply a particular language through what actually happened in human mind whose has been equipped with faculty of learning language or LAD.
The theory underlying UG assumes that language consist of a set of abstract principles that characterize core grammar of all natural language (Gass and Salinker, 1994). This assumption is in line with what Chomsky postulated. If children, who can master and use a bulk of utterances in very short period with 2 and 3 year old, have to learn such complex and abstract grammar, there must be something more than that they have got as an input from their social environment. In other words, considering the speed of acquiring the amount of utterances the children produces, it is impossible for them to get the language input from the process of repetition and memorizing from someone else. According to Chomsky, the language faculty is part of our biological endowment, and as such it is largely genetically determined. This is called poverty of stimulus-argument as defined by (Gass and Salinker, 1994) as a proposal made within the confines of Universal Grammar that input alone is not sufficiently specific to allow a child t attain the complexity of the adult grammar. Thus, the necessity of positing an innate language faculty is due to the inadequate input in term of quantity and quality, to which a learner is exposed.
- B. The Strengths and Weaknesses of Chomsky’s Theory
After summarizing some major Chomsky’s linguistic concepts, it is undeniable that Chomsky is a very brilliant linguist in his age. In his very young scientist in language study, he has opposed scientifically and linguistically to the very great prominent linguist, Bloomfield, who was believed as the father of descriptive linguistics.
The following discussion concerns the strengths and the weaknesses of Chomsky’s ideas in linguistics. The strength of the concept of the surface and deep structure in interpreting the language is not refutable since the procedures are able to analyze what is not stated in a particular expression superficially. Hence, the following discussions are focused only on the concept of competence and performance, and the Universal Grammar (UG).
The first strength of Chomsky’s concept in linguistics is the dichotomy between competence and performance. The term competence is firstly introduced to refer to something in human mind which has an innate language faculty of children acquiring their first language. Through the process that happened in human brain children area able to speak perfectly in very short period and they can be ideal speakers without making many errors. Therefore, grammar should describe the competence not the performance as the actualization of human competence of language.
There are two weaknesses exis at least in the concept of Competence. First, in reality, commont human beings or even educated people saldom use the language in dialy conversation in an ideal situation, as such, it sound unrealistic (Huda, 1999). If people make to use the utterances in ideal situation is looks strange and ridiculous. For instance, the interaction between a becak driver and a a lecturer.
Lecturer : Cak, ke kantor pos berapa?
Becak driver : Rp. 5000,-
If the lecturer above wants to use the langauge in ideal Indonesian, he will say like: “ Cak saya mau pergi ke kantor pos, maukah bapak mengantarkan sya ke sana” and the becak driver will say” Oh, ya pak, saya tidak kebertan asalkan bapak membayar ongkos Rp. 5000,-. Gimana bapak bersedia” Such kind of dialogue is not realistic and even impossible to occur in real communication in the society. Second, Chomsky’s concept of competence has a flaw seen from sociolinguistic view. Hymes in Huda (1999) says that the concept of competence defined by Chomsky is a reflection of one’s ability in a language. Conversely, a speaker who just masters the ideal style cannot be claimed to have mastered the language in its actual terms. Rather, it is just a linguistic competence which separates grammar from the context and it is just a beginner. Moreover, A high level of language mastery should involve grammatical rules related to social norms to the language use.
In addition to strength and weaknesses of competence and performance, the notion of the availability of the innate LAD (currently comprises to UG) or mental structure in the human brain which can, according to Chomsky, make small children able to communicate with others is as the strength of the ideas. This idea of UG can attack the frontier in school of linguistics and it is believed that by the concept of UG, linguists can analyze the inner process of first language acquisition of a new born child. It is meant that what happens in children’s mind when acquiring the first language indicate that there are psychological processes in their mind which cannot be identified superficially and it can take place to any children and language without limiting to one particular language.
Like the flaw of competence idea which is vewed from sociolinguistic prespactive, the UG theory also is failed to deal with the sociolinguistic phenomena. Take for example: the politeness expression Would you please is combined with the impatience expression shut up. If the expressions are combined into Would you please shut up, the this expression is syntactically well-formed, it is pragmatically ill-formed; for it violates linguistic proliteness ( Evin-trip in Kadarisman, 2006).
C. The Contribution of Chomsky’s Ideas to SLA Study.
Finally, it can be concluded that by the revolutionary concept of the study of language from Chomsky in 1950 concerning with LAD which is innate in human early born and the explanatory adequacy of TG grammar in viewing the language is greatly influential to the SLA study. In other words, the discovering and developing theory of linguistics which involving psychological theories, Chomsky’s great ideas play great effect to the early emergence of the theory of second language acquisition and research on SLA concerning specifically on the psychological process. Ellis (1997) admits that one of the outcome of the growth and diversification of SLA is that much of the research is no longer directly concerned with pedagogic issues. But, there is now a large body of researches based on Chomsky’s theory of Universal Grammar. According this theory, Chomsky postulates that children are able to learn their mother tongue because they have innate knowledge of the possible form that the grammar of any language can take. To support this idea White cited by Gass and Salinker (1994) provide the example of the use of want and wanna as follow:
- Who do you want to feed the dog?
- Who do you wanna feed the dog?*
- Who do you want to win the race?
- Who do you wanna win the race?*
Without some prior information, it would be difficult to determine the correct distribution of want to versus wanna in informal English. The input does not give sufficiently specific information about where to use wanna and where not to. In this case, the principle of universal grammar comes into play.
So, one of the main goals of UG-based SLA is to investigate whether and how these principles operate in second language acquisition (Ellis, 1997). From this point onward, the researches on SLA from the basis of Universal Grammar are largely conducted by linguists to date. There are two principles in order to analyze that UG is fully active and available to adult second language learners. The two principles are Structure Dependence (taken from White in Gass and Salinker. 1994) and Subjacency (Schachter in Gass and Salinker, 1994). The example of structure dependence principle is given below:
- The boy who is standing over there is happy.
1a. Is the boy who is standing over there is happy?
1b. * Is the boy who ____ standing over there is happy?
The rule for question formation makes reference to the subject. (1a) is grammatically well-formed while (1b) is grammatically ill-formed. The rule of yes/no questions are formed by moving the main verb to the front of the sentence (1a), not moving the first verb in the sentence (1b). According to White, the phenomena occur in Japanese language where article ne is placed in the end of a sentence and no word order changes are made.
The other example of Subjacancy in English is provided as follow:
Speaker 1: I agree with the idea that David loves Mary Jo .
Speaker 2: I didn’t hear you. * Who do you agree with the idea that David
loves?
The sentence made by speaker 2 Who do you agree wirh the idea that David loves? is ungrammatical because due to the fact that in English, the movement is cosntrained by the distance between the original noun phrase Mary Jo and its new position in the sentence. In speaker 2’s sentence, the movement rule is violated. According to Schachetr, the phenomena also take places in Dutch and Indonesian in forming rule of changing sentence into Wh-question. Below are the samples translated in Indonesian.
Speaker 1: Saya setuju dengan pendapat bahwa David cinta pada Mary Jo
Speaker 2: Saya tidak dengar. Siapa yang setuju dengan pendapat bahwa
David Cinta?
In sum, from the examples above in which the processes of acquiring first language that are grammatically complex is also hypothesized that the the principles of UG play into role in second language acquisition processes as well.
- D. Conclusion
In summary, the ideas of Chomsky in linguistic which involve psychological aspects in linguistics have proved that he has changed the face of linguistics in world which at that time was dominated by descriptive linguist, such as Bloomfield.
By pioneering the ideas Surface and Deep Structure in syntax, theories of Competence and Performance, and Universal Grammar, Chomsky’s brilliant theories, though they have some critics from sociolinguists, have changed the belief of linguistic study into challenging stages and has strongly influenced to the study of second language acquisition viewed from inherent aspects in human mind.
References
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Gass, S. M. and Selinker, L. 1994. Second Language Acquisition: An Introductory Course. New Jersey. Lawrence Erlbaum Associate Publisher.
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